Staff Pick

Unruly Places is The Chronicles of Narnia for grown-ups, made real. Sorted into chapters like "Dead Cities" and "No Man's Lands," which are further divided into vignettes about specific locations (complete with the global coordinates!), Unruly Places takes the reader into both natural and man-made spaces, far-flung and domestic. Bonnett is keenly interested in how people perceive and create places, and one of the pleasures of this book are his insights into what our desires regarding place say about us. Why do we lust for new places to explore and to own, and what do we do in a world that's been primarily mapped out? Recommended By Rhianna W., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

A tour of the world's hidden geographies — from disappearing islands to forbidden deserts — and a stunning testament to how mysterious the world remains today.

At a time when Google Map's Street View can take you on a virtual tour of Yosemite's remotest trails and cell phones double as navigational systems, its hard to imagine there's any uncharted ground left on the planet. In Unruly Places, Alastair Bonnett goes to some of the most unexpected, offbeat places in the world to reinspire our geographical imagination.

Bonnett's remarkable tour includes moving villages, secret cities, no man's lands, and floating islands. He explores places as disorienting as Sandy Island, an island included on maps until just two years ago despite the fact that it never existed. Or Sealand, an abandoned gun platform off the English coast that a British citizen claimed as his own sovereign nation, issuing passports and crowning his wife as a princess. Or Baarle, a patchwork of Dutch and Flemish enclaves where walking from the grocery stores produce section to the meat counter can involve crossing national borders.

An intrepid guide down the road much-less traveled, Bonnett reveals that the most extraordinary places on earth might be hidden in plain sight, just around the corner from your apartment or underfoot on a wooded path. Perfect for urban explorers, wilderness ramblers, and armchair travelers struck by wanderlust, Unruly Places will change the way you see the places you inhabit.

Review

"In short, four-to-five page essays, social geographer Bonnett explores forbidding cities like the pirate stronghold of Hobyo, Somalia, the abandoned town of Pripyat, hard by the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and the underground towns of Turkish Cappadocia; dejected dwellings, like the RV camp at LAX's Parking Lot E and the secret 'Bright Light' CIA detention center in Bucharest; fake places, like the empty British towns built to distract German bombers from real ones and the completely imaginary Sandy Island, which appeared on maps of the Pacific for a century until it was discovered not to exist; a homey fox den and an inaccessible traffic island near the author's English home. Bonnett digs up interesting lore on these 47 offbeat sites that, together, 'conspire to make the world seem a stranger place where discovery and adventure are still possible, both nearby and far away.',. Bonnett's charming, pensive prose and light-handed erudition illuminates the stubborn human impulse to find a home in the unlikeliest places. (July)" Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Review

"Delightfully quirky." —Ron Charles, Washington Post

"Fascinating...A conversational, thoroughly researched, and very engaging armchair tour of what might be seen as a parallel planet to the one we live in every day—one in which nothing is ordinary...Alastair Bonnett is a most excellent traveling companion." —The Atlantic

"A chronicle of the worlds missing and hidden treasures...Bonnett manages to imbue the mundane—a traffic island in Newcastle, England—with the same gravitas given to the politically and historically weighty—an empty decoy city in North Korea meant to lure defectors from its southern neighbor." —The Daily Beast

“A fascinating delve into uncharted, forgotten, and lost places. . . . not just a trivia-tastic anthology of remote destinations but a nifty piece of psychogeography, explaining our human need for these cartographical conundrums." —Wanderlust

“Unruly Places works to re-enchant the world by introducing us to unlikely places: places that exist but cannot be found on any map, places on maps that do not exist, islands that disappear or suddenly appear, deserts that form out of lakes, and labyrinths beneath cities. Carefully avoiding nostalgia and rose-tinted topophilia, Bonnett manages to reveal a myriad of ways in which place and geography still matter.” —Tim Cresswell, author of Place, An Introduction and professor of history and international affairs, Northeastern University

“Through dozens of punchy tales, Bonnett takes us on an imaginative grand tour of the most exceptional places in the world, reminding us that even in an age of seemingly total surveillance, the world is teeming with geographic mysteries.” —Bradley Garrett, author of Explore Everything

"Bonnetts charming, pensive prose and light-handed erudition illuminates the stubborn human impulse to find a home in the unlikeliest places." —Publishers Weekly

"A wonderful collection of a few dozen geographical enchantments, places that defy expectations and may disturb and disorient yet rekindle the romanticism of exploration and the meaning of place...A scintillating poke to our geographical imaginations." —Kirkus Reviews (STARRED review)

"This book will satisfy armchair travelers as well as those who appreciate thought-provoking journeys." —Library Journal

Synopsis

The real-life answers to Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, Unruly Places explores the most extraordinary, off-grid, offbeat places on the planet. Alastair Bonnett's tour of the planet's most unlikely micro-nations, moving villages, secret cities, and no man's lands shows us the modern world from surprising new vantage points, bound to inspire urban explorers, off-the-beaten-trail wanderers, and armchair travelers. He connects what we see on maps to whats happening in the world by looking at the places that are hardest to pin down: inaccessible zones, improvised settlements, multiple cities sharing the same space.

Consider Sealand, an abandoned gun platform off the English coast that a British citizen claimed as his own sovereign nation, issuing passports and making his wife a princess. Or Baarle, a patchwork city of Dutch and Flemish enclaves where crossing the street can involve traversing national borders. Or Sandy Island, which appeared on maps well into 2012 despite the fact it never existed.

Illustrated with original maps and drawings, Unruly Places gives readers a new way of understanding the places we occupy.

About the Author

Alastair Bonnett is Professor of Social Geography at Newcastle University. The author of numerous academic texts, he served as editor of the avant-garde, psycho-geographical magazine Transgressions: A Journal of Urban Exploration.